[twitter and future of creative technologies]

On Thursday at The Future of Creative Technologies Conference it was bandied around that twitter, though used, isn't really worth (financially) much. In fact, when someone suggested that twitter and business model don't go hand in hand there were quite a few appreciative guffaws. A recent post by Steve Clayton also touches on the subject: "Wow…quite a story from Kara Swisher today that Facebook was interested in buying Twitter

for $500m. Okay, I love Twitter as much as anyone but $500m is a big chunk of cash for something that isn’t making money at the moment. That’s not to say that it couldn’t and I think the only way Twitter is going is up but in the current climate, that’s a big wedge.

Personally I think Twitter is right to hold out but hope it’s all a big game of Russian roulette."

Photo by John Wardell (Netinho) on flickr.

[the future of creative technologies conference]

xposted from the ioct blog:


Yesterday saw the Campus Centre filled with over 100 delegates participating in workshops and discussions on the Future of Creative Technologies. After the morning workshop sessions there were talks by Jim Hendler, Lev Manovich and Howard Rheingold. We concluded the conference with a lively discussion session.

Have a look at what people were saying about the conference

Twitter - http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23foct08

Jerry Fishenden has a text version the twitter stream: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dg9qx8bc_3hpxpkhd5

Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=foct08

Googled:

http://scienceoftheinvisible.blogspot.com/2008/11/future-of-creative-technologies-foct08.html

http://www.l4l.co.uk/?p=129

http://transitlab.org/2008/11/20/the-future-of-creative-technologies-conference-08/

My photos on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jesslaccetti/sets/72157609610632533/

[future of creative technologies conference]

14 days until The Future of Creative Technologies Conference - 20th of November at the IOCT, De Montfort University in Leicester.

The conference has an excellent line-up with three of the IOCT's visiting professors sharing their views in the afternoon (Dr Jim Hendler, Professor Howard Rheingold, Dr Lev Manovich) while the morning session lets delegates choose which of three workshops they'd like to participate in.

Places are almost fully booked .

If you'd like to come (it's free!) register online.

[conference: IT and teaching]

SITE 2009 - Charleston, South Carolina - March 2 - 6, 2009

Proposals Due: October 17 2008

Call for Presentations

Presentation Types

Proposal Submission Guide & Form

Advance Program/Registration

Deadlines

Topics

Proceedings Guidelines

Presenter Lounge

Corporate Participation

Overview

Registration Rates

Hotel & Travel Information

Charleston, South Carolina

Program Committee

Review Policy


GENERAL TOPICS:
* Assessment and E-folios
* Corporate
* Development of Future Faculty
* Digital Video
* Distance/Flexible Education
* Electronic Playground
* Equity and Social Justice
* Evaluation and Research
* Games and Simulations
* Graduate Education and Faculty Development
* Information Literacy
* Information Technology Diffusion/Integration
* International Education
* Latino/Spanish Speaking Community
* Leadership
* New Possibilities with Information Technologies
* Web/Learning Communities
* Workforce Education


See more at the conference site: http://site.aace.org/conf/

[conference: science in the 21st century]

Sounds like a conference that anyone interested in transdisciplinarity and web 2.0 (for lack of a better term) should go to. Just take a look at some of the talks like Katy Börner's talk on "domain maps of abstract semantic spaces" ( scimaps.org) or Jacques Distler on how blogs, wikis etc... are reshaping communication in the sciences or Barry Wellman and Rainie Lee on "Networked Individualism and the Triple Revolution: Networks, Internet and Mobility."

"Times are changing. In the earlier days, we used to go to the library, today we search and archive our papers online. We have collaborations per email, hold telephone seminars, organize virtual networks, write blogs, and make our seminars available on the internet. Without any doubt, these technological developments influence the way science is done, and they also redefine our relation to the society we live in. Information exchange and management, the scientific community, and the society as a whole can be thought of as a triangle of relationships, the mutual interactions in which are becoming increasingly important."

Sep. 8th-12th 2008, Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Ontario

[interrupt festival hosted by john cayley]

eUInterrupt 2008, to be held at Brown University from October 17-19, is a three-day festival of readings, performances, and symposia organized around the theme of “interruption” in digital art and programmable literary practices. Why “Interrupt”? In computing, a hardware interrupt request or IRQ is used to prioritize the execution of certain processes over others. It is a command sent to the processor to get its attention, signaling the need to initiate a new operation.

In the context of contemporary art, the act of interruption is a performance that redirects threads of process and lines of thought into fields of new expression. Interrupts trigger the moment when a process of creation yields a public manifestation. The cycle of ongoing work is paused by a challenge, calling for the attention of a provisional community: just as we read ICQ as “I seek you,” we can read IRQ as “I argue.” In this sense, interrupts articulate critical thresholds at which formal expressions are offered up to (or forced into) new circuits of communication, countering that which came before and making a case for new artistic and political futures.

We ask you to attend and participate.

Artists in Residence:
* Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries *

Confirmed Headliners:
* Alan Sondheim & Foofwa d'Imobilité *
* Laetitia Sonami *
* Eugenio Tisselli *
* Marko Niemi *

Details and arrangements to be confirmed:
* cris cheek *
* Abigail Child *
* Chris Funkhouser *
* Loss Pequeňo Glazier *
* Talan Memmott *
* Bill Seaman and Penny Florence *
* Patricia Tomaszek *

Critics, theorists, artists and students who would like to attend are asked to contact John_Cayley (at) brown.edu. We will be organizing two or more round table sessions during the festival, and we invite brief presentations intended to spark critical discussions relating to the work of interruption within the context of digitally mediated language practices. Participants will also be invited to instigate discussion at these round tables.

If you would like to attend, and particularly if you have institutional backing, we ask you to consider supporting Interrupt with a registration contribution of $50 (checks only please) made out to 'Brown University' and sent to:

Interrupt 2008
Brown University
Literary Arts Program
Box 1923
Providence RI 02912

For letters of invitation, please contact John_Cayley (at) brown.edu. Register now.

To read more about what we mean by Interrupt and for other details about the festival – including the preliminary program, schedule, location, venues, and accommodation information – please refer to our website: http://interrupt2008.net

Organized and hosted at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design by graduates and undergraduates from Literary Arts, Modern Culture and Media, MEME, RISD D+M, and other departments.

Funding and support for Interrupt currently includes the following sources: Brown Creative Arts Council, the Literary Arts program, RISD Digital+Media, MEME, the Brown Graduate School, the Comparative Literature department.

[nlab social networks conference - panel discussion]

Panel Discussion Rounding up the issues of the day with Steve Clayton, Roland Harwood, Chris Meade, Vijay Riyait, Andrea Saveri.

"All our relationships are built on favours...ultimately that's how you make money." (RH)

Distinguishing between the social media platform and the activities, sometimes these issues are conflated (AS)

Emergence of new infrastructure for businesses and on top of that the ways we support client development etc...(AS)

Questions:
How to bridge the gap between all the technical skills and the person/client/community. How do you bring the benefits of social netowkring to more people more of the time?

It is clear that these tools have benefits. It is time to get a little more political (CM) - it's about sharing information and succeeding globally.

Vijay notes that there aren't really many of these kinds of conferences engaging small businesses particularly out of London. We need to get out there and connect with business groups etc... Creative Coffee Club then fits in really well with this idea.

Question:
Caroline from PCM Creative - If you could only keep two social media platforms what would they be and why?

Twitter because it's fascinating and Facebook. Niche social networking is important but the grander interactions with people you don't know are it (RH)

Chris thinks it's a good idea to have only one that can do all sorts of things. That could be more exciting rather than another thing appearing and another thing we need to learn.

For Andrea it's delicious and news aggregator that tracks all the blogs so that she can stay in touch with a whole community of people.

Facebook allows Vijay to connect with colleagues and clients which as a small business helps develop a social relationship which helps build trust.

Question from Karl Craig West: He explains that his clients should use social networking but they come back saying "so." Why should small businesses get into social networking, where's the business incentive.

Vijay: How many people run a small business (half the delegates). How do you get your business (networking). Vijay says social networking can only help. The value in getting to people.

Chris reminds us what Jim said, that online social networking lets you do more for less. What about the tailor who went from "zero to hero" (RH) and Jim Benson solving a problem within 25 minutes after asking the twitterverse. That's got to be important to a business.

There are ways to expand markets, to get that kind of reach with social networking. Also where you need expert knowledge. Using social media to participate in channels where you can get that kind of information (AS).

David Terrar: it doesn't matter what the business is, there are always tangible benefits. Dell using the platform to talk to customers etc... There isn't a killer feature other than collaboration.

Michael: consensus that social networking is worth investing in but isn't it a bit oversaturated and actually aren't consumers way more savvy? Consumers know there's an agenda behind it.

Chris Meade says this is why it's important to pick one kind of platform and stick with it. It's better that people have a focus and know what they are after. Vijay reminds us that there are companies who began a blog under the pretense that it was written but a real, unaffiliated person. We need rules on transparency.

Toby Moores: One question we haven't yet addressed is the dramatic shift in landscape, the fact that India and China are producing more grads than we are producing children. So doing the innovative bit of business is going to shift so the value of social media is amplifying that process. How much do you believe that social media will be adpoted and support this shift in landscape?

Andrea thinks it will. It is a collaborative, open, social platform. It supports emergent swarm activity. But right now China has the greatest number of bloggers around so she wouldn't underestimate their involvement in the creative side of business.

Could we live without the web? RH says we assume it'll be there forever in the shape it is now.

Vijay says the whole thing about social networking is allowing people to be creative, letting go of some of that control. We know big businesses will adopt it but will smaller businesses?

Question from Andrew (?): what is really different with social networking? Moved from relationship marketing to meeting needs of the customer but today, social networking enhances that relationship, makes that conversation much better. Forces traditional thinking businesses into rexaming the way they do business if they have come from a "command and control position." But the younger businesses will do things very very differently. Suggestion from Andrew to FSB and BusinessLink to do some case studies to move this into the real world and out of academia (note: this isn't an academic conference!). Note from Sue: Shani has been working with Creative Coffee Club to do exactly that.

just found social cash - a way to magically monetize?

[nlab social networks conference - jim benson]

Social Networking Beyond The Dogma: Let's Make Some Money

The application of social networking and social media technologies ultimately should help your business work better. How do you set goals, create campaigns, and execute cost effectively?

NOTE: if you join a social network - twitter, facebook etc...you must give back to the community, answer other questions, participate otherwise you're just a leech.

Which social media networks should we be on? Well, can't say but Jim does tell us what we shouldn't be on...Facebook! At least if we're thinking about time vs content...it takes too much time whereas twitter etc...can offer benefit/value much quicker.

Social networking reduces costs of: lead acquisition, product improvement, individual sales, expert information and opportunities

Social networks are like cities by fostering growth, coordination, affinity, voice, realisation

[nlab social networks conference - ken thompson]

Bioteams: what can we learn from nature's social networks?

Ken's current job grew out of his investigation of "nature's best teams." Have a look at www.bioteams.com.

Nature’s teams, such as bees, geese, ants and dolphins, are based on a small number of fundamentally different principles than human teams. Interestingly these “bioteams” seem to bear a much closer resemblance to today’s virtual/ mobile social networks than the traditional organisation teams we all know and love. Ken will explore whether an awareness of these principles can help us get much more value out of both social software and social networks.

Ken Thompson: "Bioteams - What Can We Learn from Nature's Social Networks"

Prizes?! Ken says we're going to be interacting and we get prizes!

Most networks are networks of convenience.

Check out Ken's most recent book The Networked Enterprise.

Three principles of swarms: ask the network, all nodes, network invention

www.swarm-pro.com/private/messageboard.aspx - the name of the swarm is NL owned by ken.thompson. to join, text "JOIN NL username to 07786203958

After we've registered Ken asks us a variety of questions to which we respond via sms to this swarm team. We can all see the (often quite funny!) responses to the questions by browsing to the url. Ken is going to add this to his site later.

Apparently we're a collective brain. If there was one question we wanted to ask the room, what would it be?

How any of those constantly twittering get any work done? Ken rephrases: "Does Twitter distract from work?"

Are current group structures natural?
Bioteams share 4 common behaviours:
any group leader can take the lead - nature's groups are never led exclusively by one member. Collective leadership is...the right leader for the right task at the right time. Single leader teams are no longer appropriate.

Pheromone-style Short messaging. Nature's groups use short instant message. Instantly broadcast and received in situ. Short and simple...all species have a message instinct.

Small is Beautiful and Big is powerful

Crowds - everyone does the same thing at the same time...Scale or the Wisdom of Crowds.
Sall groups...everyone can do different things at different times

Read the many through the few. Nature's networks are clustered. Some group members have many more connections than the average. These members have extreme connectivity.

Humberto Maturana on Autopoieses: "a living system is one whose only products are itself." (more on Maturana here: http://www.oikos.org/maten.htm)

Boundary, processes, nervous system, external communications = living network

Check out swarm tribes: http://www.swarmtribes.com/Public/getswarming.aspx?sname=jd4

*The most successful teams on the planet are not human teams.*

[nlab social networks conference - roland harwood]

Roland Harwood: "Are Online Social Networks the New Cities?"

social networks are starting to fulfill some of the interactions upon which cities are traditionally based

two books that have inspired Roland:
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs and Emergence by Steven Johnson

Manchester - first formed as a settlement in 76 and 1301 there was a town charter and in 1700-1850 because of industrial revolution it grew ten-fold though not formally recognised as a city until 1853.

People who study urban growth talk about the role of technology (field rotation etc...) on the development of cities. "I think the internet is going to have as profound effect on cities but we're only at the beginning."

See Richard Florida Flight of the Creative Class.

Jane Jacobs talks about the essence of cities, especially cites in which you can walk. In a car you are isolated but on foot you overhead conversations, have encounters and even change your behaviour based on those encounters. The characteristics of good cities:

random encounters, information storage and exchange, communities, space to play, economies of scale, trade/sharing, organised complexity, anonymity.

Diversity drives innovation. We need to create more space to cross-fertilise our ideas (this can feed into my IOCT research on transdisciplinarity).

Roland's just mentioned a really interesting idea of "bothies": random shelters that people can use for free?! See here for more info: http://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/

[social media in lay terms]

Over at common craft there's a handy video explaining social media in "plain English." Useful for anyone new to social media and in tune with our upcoming (this Thursday!) NLab Social Networks conference in Leicester.

Warning: the video might make you hungry for ice cream:

[recherche en littératies multiples - multiple literacies]

I recently received an invitation from Diana Masny at the University of Ottawa/Littératies Multiples to attend this amazing conference on multiple literacies. Colin Lankshear will be presenting his research on digital literacy (woo hoo!) from a sociocultural perspective. Check out the blog, Everyday Literacies that Colin writes with Michele Knobel.

[learning on screen - day 2]

1st speaker of the day: Paul Maidment, BBC Worldwide, BBC Motion Gallery

check out: https://jisc.bbcmotiongallery.com (but this is the corporate site although there is a 30 day free trial), the accessible version is here.

(nb: am struck again how un-googleable some of these speakers are...)

One of the pros of using the bbc motion gallery is the ability to view a video (which are tagged with key words but the tags are more or a taxonomy rather than folksonomy as it is the bbc who ass the "search related keywords") and then choose the key words which allows an "intuitive" way to search.

Interesting is the ability to choose the "inspiration" link which provides a *concept randomiser* "spawning new keywords as fast as you can click."

500 new BBC clips added each month, feedback from establishments to dictate future content addtions, more content collections to be added each quarter, including both broadcast and niche archives, showcasing of student work, competition to encourage students to creatively use BBC material (winning entries will appear on BBC tv)

---

Professor Sean Street, Bournemouth University speaking about Online Access to the Archives of Independent Radio




Challenge: how to make available radio archives: radio.bufvc.ac.uk


(just tried to access the site but, sadly, my athens account doesn't give me access...so is this really accessible?)




We're being shown a radio documentary on Albert Pierrepoint called "The Hangman." Though a sound piece they're using windowms media player and have the image randomization turned on so we're all feeling slightly hypnotised.



Sean decides to show us how the search function works on this radio archive and decides to search for "suicide"..funnily enough: "no clips match your terms." The archive is still under construction. What is available is Brodsky and James Stewart, The Glen Miller Story (with some typos but we're told "it's a work in progress"). The idea of making independent radio clips available

The problem: the digitisation of clips. sticky-tape syndrome, some take was left to oxidise and that means part of the tape would be unreadable. The British Library figured out a way to *bake* the clips which could then be played ONCE and digitised then, if not the clips would be lost. This is restoration as well as access.

---

Nipan J. Maniar, head of advanced interactive multimedia research group (what a great job title!) at Uni. of Portsmouth. He's talking about the university's use of streaming media.

• there are security issues, DRM
• right now the database has to be updated manually so out of 3000 uploads only 380 are available
• available in different kinds of quality because "bandwidth is not an issue" hrm...I think it's a huge issue in this country, some parts don't even have the possibility of broadband (lack of providers or inadequate lines etc..)
• they track the usage of any media that *leaves* portsmouth
• how to combine the teaching with the showing of streaming video? it shouldn't be a case of spectatorship but should be interactive
• look at www.lifesign.ac.uk and stream.port.ac.uk but nanonet.org.uk seems to have a really useful tool that allows people to upload ppts and video so on one side of the screen there is an image (ppt or page of text) and on the other side of the screen is a video of a lecture or presentation.
  

Here is a sample of Nipan using streaming media in his lectures:

• One stop media shop


• securing media
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

• log usage


• tools for teachers - helpful way of encouraging/enabling academics' independency
  access to streaming media server


"it is good to give academics some weapons to make media interesting"

Nipan's idea to have educational media online for people to download as and when (like any other kind of video store but online and for educational media): www.sourcelearn.com.

---

Chris Lane: "Presentation of DVD player/text commentary software (DPTCS)


This seems to be an idea that allows DVD content to be re-edited and integrated with other media such as text etc...

as teachers, we are moving from film educators to film makers, enacting while teaching

why is more sohpisticated DVD control important - prepare a teaching presentation, embed production in student learning

There is a really great idea - add GIS information to films so that students can literally track not only the shots but how the events/timeline unfold - the actual physicality of the more ephemeral film.

They have also created a massive database of their films that means all film files are searchable by character (how many shots and types of shots, close up etc...), by mood, by lighting...a major taxonomy behind each film but how great a resource would this be in any classroom?




We've just been shown a little clip of how users can add commentary to a dvd: AMAZING! I wish I'd had this software for my thesis. It means I would have been able to annoted web fictions with my different points of view. The clip we've been shown is a "traditional" reading of Vertigo, then a commentary employing theories of the male gaze and finally a third commentary with suggests a feminist interpretation.

But, right now this software seems only available for DVDs.

[blogging a conference - some tips]

I came across this excellent guide by Bruno Giussani and Ethan Zuckerman through Sue Thomas's google reader shared feedz.

In no particular order:

Speakers
"It’s relatively easy to blog good and great speakers: They follow a narrative path through their talks and speak at a pace the audience can understand.
It’s harder to blog inexperienced speakers(because they may be too technical,
confusing, fast, etc.) and multi-speaker panels (because the discussion can take many different unstructured turns). But you don’t need to transcribe the whole talk, you need to capture the gist of it. A 20-minutes talk can often be summarized in a
20-lines post.

Audience
You’re not blogging for the speaker, you’re blogging for yourself and for the people who may read your blog. So if a talk is too hard, too bad, too uninteresting to blog, don’t be afraid to give up on it. It’s the speaker’s fault if (s)he can’t make the material interesting or intelligible. (This should never, however, be an excuse for laziness.)

Timing
Ideally, you should liveblog, which means that you write the post, and add the links, as the speaker is talking, and publish the post not later than 10 minutes after the speech or panel is over. Not everybody can do this; it takes a certain habit. Think of it this way: If you can publish right away, you will be able to network with the other conference participants during the breaks, rather
than sitting at your laptop rewriting your notes."

[machinima festival at dmu]

woo hoo! tomorrow I'm heading over to the machinima festival at dmu.

Check out the small print...guess who was one of the judges:

[I was part of the herd...]

that went to hear Howard Rheingold and Mark Earls talk lastnight at NESTA's hosted session on Mass Collaboration.

It was fully booked.

Howard kicked things off with some tales of collaboration, or rather lack of: politics is about "your side winning," and biology is war.

But, over the last few years Howard explained that he's been tracking the emergence of a "new narrative; one in which competition is still central but no longer all encompasing and shrinks just a little bit to leave room for some of the new knowledge that's developing over a wide variety of field about complex interdependencies and cooperative arrangements."

Howard went on to talk about three "mythic narratives" one of which was the prisoner's dilema in which (more or less) the prisoners need to cooperate in order to win. (For a little blurb on this see here).

Then Howard brought up his second mythic narrative, the tragedy of the commons (see G. Hardin, Science 162, 1243 (1968).) Basically, human behaviour is dog-eat-dog and when there's something like, oh, let's say a nice green pasture, people will keep adding one more sheep to the field in the end "desertifying" it as Howard says. Moving from that idea that humans inherently want to maximise their own gain, Howard referred to Elinor Ostrum, a political scientist, who asked important questions of groups who did not deforestlands or over fish etc...how did some of these communities manage their resources? Or, in Ostrom's words:

"The central question in this study is how a group of principals who are in an interdependent situation can organize and govern themselves to obtain continuing joint benefits when all face temptations to free-ride, shirk, or otherwise act opportunistically."

What Ostrom found was that in each of the groups that successfully managed their environment, there was a set of 8 design principles including "clearly defined boundaries, monitors who are either resource users or accountable to them, graduated sanctions, and mechanisms dominated by the users themselves to resolve conflicts and to alter the rules." The principle Howard focused on is that of "altruistic punishment." To explain the point he Mark {oops, typo: it was Mark's story!!} told us a little story about an honesty box in the coffee shop and if that honesty box had a "pair of eyes above it" then people were more likely to be honest and pay for their coffee... (Read this article for a more recent theorising of community behaviour by Elinor Ostrom, et al in Science).

Mark Earls began by being "outed" as having a background in advertising though his own beginning to the presentation included a quote (seemingly) not about branding or commercial gain but from African philosophy, Ubuntu. Mark explained the quote, and he did say he was explaining it as "he" understood it: "a man is only a man with and through other men." Yeah...what about women? At least the translation might seek to collaborate with the other half of the community; women! I googled Ubuntu as soon as I arrived home, hoping to find out a bit more about this philosophy. Instead, I was reminded that Earls is all about branding because Ubuntu, of course, is the name of that new

"community developed, linux-based operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. It contains all the applications you need - a web browser, presentation, document and spreadsheet software, instant messaging and much more. Ubuntu is free software."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu defines Ubuntu as having "to do with what it means to be truly human, to know that you are bound up with others in the bundle of life."

Anyway, that invocation of African philosophy came back to Earls during the question/answer session.

Funnily enough, in a presentation about collaboration Earls asked the audience members to collaborate by doing a "Mexican wave." That was erm...fun. With audience members busy scribbling, typing, clicking, and videoing away, we had to be asked twice and indeed, needed to practise. Here we are trying to collaborate:

Earls further exemplified (to me and Jo Howard who later asked him a question about this) an undercurrent in his theorising that doesn't really seem to be about collaboration but more about power. For one, he created a divide between "us" (northern europeans) and "them" (non-northern Europeans) Plus one image he used in his ppt really stood out for me, an image of a young woman pointing up into the sky with the words "bigger boys" at the top.

Earls said he uses this excuse himself, that "bigger boys made me do it." But why not use an image of himself pointing up? Why an image of a woman? The image was related to a story about a handful of "loonies" pointing up into the sky being enough to make passerbys also look up as they're "covinced" they've missed something...this is an indication of how easy it is for other people to influence us.

Again in question time this binary opposition was picked up and someone asked Earls about aligning the west with a more combative approach and the east with a collaborative one. Interesting. In his answer Earls refers to Richard Nisbett's book The Geography of Thought which is based upon explaining these dualities. I like Razib's review at the Gene Expression where he says

"Nisbett's book is worth a read, at least if you are a business-person or a marketer, but he really does not present any new axiomatic constructs that shift anyone's paradigm."

Maybe I just happened to be more aware of binaries or the invocation of "otherness" because of a sign I had spotted in a shop window on the way to the NESTA building:

There are always "others"...


Earls did use some good words though: exogenous, neotenic mutation, Axolotl.



Look at the technologies being used:

NESTA has put up the podcast from the evening: http://www.nesta.org.uk/assets/mp3/11-09-07/howard_rheingold.mp3 and http://www.nesta.org.uk/assets/mp3/11-09-07/mark_earls.mp3.

[renewals: other than academic]

Interspersed with the thought-provoking panels, papers, presentations, escapes to the library, and myriad conversations, I had the pleasure of roaming Royal Holloway's beautiful campus, poking my head in the extravagant chapel, and dining in the Picture Gallery.

One night Sue and I embarked on a game of pool prompted much thinking (on my part) as to why I enjoy a game at which I'm so embarrassingly poor. I enjoyed the concentration required to hold the cue and the drive to sink my yellow ball. I found myself mentally tracing the patterns that we created with the balls crashing and then diverging. Then I did some reading and it seems, according to some scientists that we don't actually see the touching/colliding/smashing of balls but rather only the after-effect. It sounds like we only see that which causes collision rather than collision itself.

Kind of like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: you might know the speed of a quantum particle, but you won't know its exact location.

On Friday evening we enjoyed live Jazz while we sipped Pimms within Founder's North Quad. It was (finally) lovely weather and the notes seemed to float along with the breeze and murmuring of voices. Once I figure out how to transfer sound files from my blackberry I'll add some music here.

Update: Catherine, the blogger in residence for the Renewals conference, has added a slew of posts on panels and presentations. Check it out.

[Renewals: Refiguring University English in the 21st Century

After a myriad of welcomes to the conference (including Elaine Showalter who regaled us with humorous epithets of her time at the MLA), Alan Liu presented his vision of “Knowledge 2.0: The University and Web 2.0."

Here are some bits that I managed to jot down in between being enthralled by Alan's enthusiasm:

1) Technology effects knowledge